184 © Shells as evidence of the Migrations. 
that of other peoples, ¢.g., the Indian.“ Attention has 
already been called to the similarity of this custom to 
that of the Togo people of West Africa. 
The money-cowry (Cypr@a moneta) is, and has been 
for centuries, a sacred object among the Ojibwa and 
Menomini Indians of North America, and is employed in 
initiation ceremonies of the Grand Medicine Society. 
The use of this particular cowry by these Indians is of 
peculiar interest; in the first place; owing to it being 
alien to the American continent, and in the second place, 
in view of its intimate association with so many remark- 
able and fantastic beliefs and practices in different parts 
of the Old World. 
The tradition among the Indians is that the original 
sacred shell—migis,~ of the Ojibwa ; hona’pamih, of the 
Menomini—was introduced by a particular hero-god, who 
acted as an intermediary between the Great Unknown 
and the Indians, and founded their Medicine Society. 
Among the Menomini the sacred shell appears always to 
be the small white money-cowry, Cyvprea moneta,™ but 
among the Ojibwa, according to Hoffman, it consists of a 
small white shell, of almost any species: but the one 
believed to resemble the mythical m7’ gvs is similar to the 
money-cowry. This fact would seem to imply that the 
money-cowry is scarce among them, and those they 
possess, doubtless handed down from generation to genera- 
tion, are regarded with special veneration as being like 
**3 Schneider, of. cif, p. 108. 
1e¢ W. J. Hoffman, Bureau of Ethnology (United States), 7th Annual 
Report, 1885-6 (1891), and 14th Annual Keport, 1892-3 (1596), pt. i. ; also 
J. W. Jackson, Munch. Memoirs (Lit. and Phil. Soc.), vol. Ix. (1916), No. 
4. Abstract in Nafure, January 27th, 1910. 
186 In the Ojibwa language, mi gis = symbolical of life. 
1*8¢ The example figured by Hoffman (of. c/¢,, 1891, pl. xi., fig. 1) is 
interesting, as it is perforated at one end as if for suspension; it is of the 
dwarf var. afava of C. moneta (see Fig. D, p. 156). 
